Friday, February 11, 2011

The Mobile World March's On To Apple's Beat

While Microsoft and Nokia announce their big partnership, the sales for the iPhone 4 on Verizon have been described as being healthy, but hardly what you would exactly call a blowout. One reason for that could possibly be, as AppleInsider pointed out, due to the massive pre-orders which saw Verizon selling more iPhones than for any other single phone, on their first day, in its history, and all in a mere two hour period!

Meanwhile, there are now reports that Apple is about to hit the rising sales of the patented plague Android platform with a newer, smaller, and considerablly cheaper, unlocked version of its ground-breaking iPhone. Some are already calling it the 'iPhone Nano' and say that it will sell for around $200.

Speaking of Android's patent problems, at least as far as Oracle's Java suit goes, there is now an attempt to bypass any legal issues with a new project known as 'IceRobot'.

As far as its potential success goes, Engadgetreported that, "It's a tall order, and the devilish little Android has already gained a healthy amount of tech industry skepticism, but we're interested to see if these guys can make it work."

Of course, Google's Android platform has a lot more than just Oracle to worry about, it also has Apple's proxy suit against HTC to consider. Both Oracle and Apple have the potential, if they win their cases to, more-or-less, send the highly fragmented Android platform completely back to the drawing board, if not completely out of business!

HP, the new owners of Palm, was also recently busy and people are now expecting to see its new Pre 2 and Pre 3 models come up for pre-order soon. So far, despite a lot of people thinking that it would kill off the iPhone, WebOS so far has not gained any real traction in the marketplace. Some have even considered it to be irrelevant, but now with HP behind it, not only on smartphones, but soon also tablets and even PCs, that situation could possibly change, but there are certainly no guarantees.

The one thing about all of this recent mobile news is that it's easy to see that not only does it marches on, but that it marches on to a beat and rhythm set by Apple. Virtually every mobile company, it seems, nowadays, is pushing products that have been inspired, in one way or another, directly either by iOS, or OS X.

However, the big question now is, of course: can they do to the iPhone what Microsoft did to the Mac?

In conclusion, I certainly think that it's possible, but also think that it would be extremely hard, if not even impossible, considering Apple's early and huge lead, but, then again, you never really know, you know?